Stephen Lacey is the Editor-in-Chief of Greentech Media. He manages a team of writers focused on solar, storage, efficiency, mobility, and grid modernization. He is producer/host of The Energy Gang and Interchange podcasts, two leading interview and analysis shows on the business of energy and cleantech.

Statoil ASA, Norway’s biggest oil and gas producer, will invest as much as $200 million in renewable energy over four to seven years as part of Chief Executive Officer Eldar Saetre’s plan to diversify the company’s portfolio.

A new fund, Energy Ventures, will take a minority stake in startups developing technologies including wind power, energystorageand smart grids, according to a company statement Tuesday.

Guardian: Coalition of U.S. States Pledges to Accelerate Renewable Energy Efforts

A bipartisan group of governors from 17 states has pledged to accelerate their efforts to create a green economy in the U.S. by boosting renewables, building better electricity grids and cutting emissions from transport.

An accord signed by the governors states that the U.S. must “embrace a bold vision of the nation’s energy future” by reducing emissions, transitioning to clean energy sources and ensuring that infrastructure isn’t risked by extreme weather events such as floods and wildfires.

A handful of scientists and policymakers are grappling with the long-term environmental effect of an economy that runs increasingly on gotta-have-it-now gratification. This cycle leads consumers to expect that even their modest wants can be satisfied like urgent needs, and not always feel so great about it.

The environmental cost can include the additional cardboard -- 35.4 million tons of containerboard were produced in 2014 in the United States, with e-commerce companies among the fastest-growing users -- and the emissions from increasingly personalized freight services.

“There’s a whole fleet of trucks circulating through neighborhoods nonstop,” said Dan Sperling, the founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, and the transportation expert on the California Air Resources Board. He also is overseeing a new statewide task force of trucking companies and government officials trying to reduce overall emissions from freight deliveries, including for e-commerce.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday said a tax on carbon dioxide emissions has potential and suggested he was open to the idea.

The Democratic governor, a fiscal moderate but longtime champion of environmental causes, noted support among some conservatives for a revenue-neutral carbon tax, in which proceeds are not held by the government.

“Former secretary of treasury and former secretary of state (George) Shultz and Arthur Laffer, the Reagan adviser on supply-side economics, have both strongly endorsed a revenue-neutral carbon tax, and I would emphasize, from the conservative point of view, revenue neutrality is key because a carbon tax would require a reduction in other taxes,” Brown told reporters on a conference call. “Other people will have other points of view, and it’s a whole issue of how popular that might be, or how political. But I think there’s more potential down that road given the support of both conservatives and liberals.”

At a small event in Reno, Nevada on Saturday, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wondered aloud why the 25 former solar workers in front of him had lost their jobs.

“This should be a leading industry here,” the Vermont senator said. “You should be leading America -- you should be leading the world in encouraging people to move toward solar panels.”

Now, both Sanders and his opponent Hillary Clinton are campaigning on the issue as they compete for votes in Nevada’s upcoming Democratic presidential caucus. And as both candidates increasingly realize that every vote counts in this primary, the hundreds of laid-off solar workers in Nevada could be considered their own voting bloc.